(Im)politeness in the face of digital rejection: an analysis of whether gender affects the response to an impolite refusal of a Facebook friend request

Abstract This paper analyzes whether gender affects how people respond to a refused friend request combined with an impolite private message that expresses condescension and criticism. The private message was designed to elicit a response to the face-threatening acts of request, refusal and negative impoliteness. The study adopted an explanatory mixed methods approach to analyze 120 participant responses. Firstly, Culpeper et al.’s (Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield & Anne Wichmann. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35(10–11). 1545–1579.) model of response to the refusal options was applied to identify counter-offensive and counter-defensive responses. After that, replies were categorized according to Culpeper’s (Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3). 349–367., Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The weakest link. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1). 35–72.) (im)politeness super-strategies and Bousfield’s (Bousfield, Derek. 2007. Beginnings, middles and ends: A biopsy of the dynamics of impolite exchanges. Journal of Pragmatics 39(12). 2185–2216) defensive counterstrategies. The results show that men predominantly utilize defensive and aggressive counterstrategies, particularly mock politeness. Women, in contrast, heavily use counter defensive strategies, specifically abrogation, to deny responsibility for the triggering act. Social media is an increasingly crucial communicative tool in contemporary society, and this study provides evidence that gender-based differences can be observed in etiquette and norms on social media, which may be influenced by face-to-face dynamics. In addition, the study investigates how culture-specific expressions are discursively employed on social media to denote sarcasm or impoliteness, giving further insight into how language usage patterns may be impacted by social media.